About Me

I'm proud to be a working mom, with two terrific kids (ages 8 and 11). I got my Ph.D. in applied psychology back in 2000. We moved to upstate NY from Philadelphia in 2006, and I'm now working as a researcher at SUNY Upstate Medical University. I'm a knee-jerk liberal, though I grew up in very red-state Arizona. I'm passionate about movies and politics. Sadly, I've now spent over a DECADE eating gluten-free, so I'm always on the lookout for great gluten-free foods.

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

"Keep the Faith"

Besides the fact that this essay by NYU professor Liel Leibovitz in Tablet magazine seems mostly intended to sell the author's book, Aliyah*, I find his treatise, about the wrong-headed "leftist" rejection of religion, very odd, especially this key statement:

"Increasingly, it is governed by a humanist ethos that sees the occupation and the horrific acts committed to preserve it as an affront to universalist values. But there is a very strong argument to be made that the occupation is also an absolute violation of Judaism’s core tenets, and it’s an argument that those 70 percent of Israelis who believe in chosenness should hear."

It's actually the identical argument, with a slightly different rationale (based on Jewish values rather than universalist values), which hardly seems substantial enough to solve the entrenched problems in Israel.

One other point - I'm shocked by the repeated assertion in the comments that a "leftist" Jew is by definition self-hating. How absurd. To desire that Israel should embody Jewish values and democratic values is the greatest, deepest, and most sincere form of love that could possibly exist. A person can disagree with my position, but you cannot fairly suggest that I'm not an authentic Jew!

* Final note - the topic of his book, immigration from the US to Israel seems so odd, considering he immigrated in the opposite direction. In his column, he notes that he agreed with the Left until he wrote his book, and thereby discovered that he actually disagreed with them. Hmmm.